Tag: Office of Refugee Resettlement

More on those Annual Reports to Congress and ORR breaking the law

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Before I get started on my latest foray into the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s flagrant law breaking regarding the Annual Report to Congress, yesterday I told you what people are searching that brings them to RRW, here.

This morning I just want to mention that searches yesterday were dominated by the phrase “Little Baghdad”—that would be El Cajon, California which we have discussed on many previous occasions.  Here is our archive on the refugee-overloaded city of El Cajon.  The most-read post yesterday with over 100 hits is this old post from 2009.

Back to the Annual Reports I spend a lot of time harping about!

Federal law says that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) must file a report to Congress within three months of the close of the fiscal year.  A fiscal year ends on September 30th of a given year and so the report is due in Congress by January 31st of the following year.  Presently the ORR is THREE YEARS LATE!  They owe Congress 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Earlier this week I told you about the Legislative summary I found at the Library of Congress on the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, here.   This is what I found on the Annual Reporting requirement:

Requires the Secretary, not later than the January 31 following the end of each fiscal year beginning with fiscal year 1980, to submit reports to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees containing: (1) a labor profile for refugees who have entered the U.S. since May 1975; (2) a geographic description of refugee location; (3) a summary of the location and status of unaccompanied refugee children; (4) a description of the activities and expenditures of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, States, voluntary agencies, and sponsors; and (5) an evaluation of services provided under this Act. Requires the Secretary, in consultation with the Coordinator, to report to the Congress within one year of enactment of this Act an analysis of: (1) resettlement systems used by other countries; (2) the desirability of using a system other than the welfare system to provide refugee assistance; and (3) alternative resettlement strategies.

Hah!  I wonder if they ever did that last part!

So when did they start breaking the law, thumbing their noses at Congress and not getting these reports done?  That is what I wanted to know.

First, the ORR makes it very hard to find all the annual reports.  Some are available at their website, here.  But the missing ones are housed at the Georgetown Law Library—WHY?

My original plan was to start researching at 1990 and move toward the present time to see when they went off track and began breaking the law.  It didn’t take long—1993!

So, I went back to 1980 and sure enough through the entire Reagan Presidency and the George HW Bush Presidency from 1980 to 1992 those Annual Reports were right on time—submitted to Congress on January 31st of the following year.

But, you know what the little cheaters did beginning with the 1993 report (and continued to do for the next 20 years)—they stopped putting publication dates on them.  Oh, they had FY 1993 on the cover, but no information about when that actually went to Congress—heck it could have been three years late then!

Lavinia Limon headed the ORR in the Clinton Administration and is now a federal contractor who gets grants from ORR. Fox News Latino

So, who was the Director of the ORR during Bill Clinton’s time in office? 

Lavinia Limon who now heads up one of the nine major federal contractors—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants—was in charge of getting those reports to Congress.   And, isn’t it funny that her former VP at USCRI is presently the Director of ORR.  There are a lot of revolving doors with this program between those who are handing out federal grants and those receiving them, but that’s a story for another day!

By the way, we have written a bunch of posts on Lavinia Limon over the years.  Here her subcontractor in Waterbury, CT was found to be treating refugees poorly and had come under review by the US State Department and Ms. Limon famously said “whoop-de-do”—we don’t get paid enough to do the job any better.

Incidentally, according to the most recent Form 990 (p.9) available for Ms. Limon’s organization they received 94% of their $35 million plus income from you—the taxpayer.

Only because I was keeping track do I know that the FY2008 report was released two years and 3 months late and the FY2009 report was three years and one month late.  And, as far as I know there hasn’t been a peep from the do-nothing House and Senate Committees responsible for over-seeing the Refugee program over all these 20 years since Clinton’s ORR flagrantly began breaking the law.   I’m guessing the attitude all around is that these are good people doing good work so they don’t have to follow the law!

About the photo and Ms. Limon:  Read all about her here at Fox News Latino.  Also, when you type ‘Lavinia Limon’ into our search function, you get this archive on the dozens of posts in which we have mentioned her.

Another suggestion for the sequestration budget cutting ax: IDAs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

IDAs—Individual Development Accounts!

What is that?  It’s a fancy name for your tax dollars matching a refugee’s savings.  For every dollar a refugee saves in this program (administered not by a government agency, but laundered through a non-profit), he or she is matched a dollar from the federal treasury.  I am not kidding!

How many times over the years have I heard someone complain—how are these refugees getting cars and such—this is how.  The monies can be used toward purchasing a car, a house, a business or education.

Here is a profile of a refugee eligible for this special deal.  He/she is usually employed (and may earn up to $3000 a month!) and own a house, have one car, and no more than $10,000 in assets, and can sign up for the program.   Nothing like this is available to a low income American citizen that I know of!  Ever heard of it?

$4-5 million could be saved annually if we dumped this discriminatory program!

Like St. Patrick’s never-ending pot of gold, the federal treasury is available for certain special groups of people.

In 2009 (from that finally-released three years late 2009 Annual Report to Congress, p.38) we spent $4.6 million on the program, again by passing your money through an unaccountable non-profit agency.   If we insist on redistributing taxpayers money this way, couldn’t the program go through the state refugee agencies which are at least nominally open to public scrutiny?

By the way, ORR tells us that 8% of participants quit the program—I wonder do they give your money back?

Here then are the resettlement contractors and ethnic community group grants for 2009.  I bet they each get to keep a cut of the pie for their own “administration” of the program.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2010 are:
•
Lao Family Community Development, Inc., Oakland, CA, $200,000
•
World Relief DuPage, Wheaton, IL, $235,000
•
ISED Ventures, Des Moines, IA, $235,000
•
Jewish Family & Vocational Services, Inc., Louisville, KY, $230,000
•
International Institute of Metropolitan St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, $180,000
•
New York Association for New Americans, New York, NY, $300,000
•
Women’s Opportunities Resource Center, Philadelphia, PA, $235,000
•
Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Nashville, TN, $194,392.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2012 are:
•
Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, San Jose, CA, $204,000
•
Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Society, Inc., Bowling Green, KY, $150,000
•
Economic and Community Development Institute, Columbus, OH, $230,000
•
Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Augusta, ME, $207,901
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of Camden, Inc., Camden, NJ, $225,000
•
Diocese of Olympia, Seattle, WA, $205,000
•
ECDC Enterprise Development Group, Arlington, VA, $280,000
•
Mountain States Group, Boise, ID, $201,018
•
United Way, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, $240,000
•
Neighborhood Assets, Spokane, WA, $50,000
•
International Rescue Committee Phoenix, New York, NY, $230,000
•
Alliance for Multicultural Community Service Inc., Houston, TX, $203,500
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, $200,000
•
Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell, Inc., Lowell, MA,$192,380

I wonder if the Health and Human Services Inspector General has ever looked into this program?  Does anyone audit these outfits?

Editors note:  This is the third in my series of suggested budget cuts.  Here I suggested we could cut the grants for refugee “healthy marriages,” and here for the little ACORN-like ethnic community based organizations.  Including the IDAs, I’ve now saved the US taxpayers over $13 million!  I wonder what the sequester is going to require ORR to cut overall?

Sequester suggestion for the day: defund the Ethnic Community Based Organizations!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

Yesterday I recommended saving US taxpayers almost $4 million by gutting the Refugees must have rotten marriages program, here.   Today we can save some air traffic controller jobs by cutting over $5 million for ethnic groups who have set up their little ACORN-like fiefdoms across America.

They used to be referred to as ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations), now the bureaucrats in Washington call them Ethnic Community Self-Help organizations. 

Why do we even need these?  They are non-profits set up for specific ethnic groups (funded by you) that help THEIR people (their ethnic group!) get signed up for welfare, find jobs, learn English, register to vote, demand THEIR rights and are the voice of THEIR people in your city.  In short, they promote balkanization. 

The federal government already contracts nine major contractors who in turn contract hundreds of sub-contractors whose job it is to get new immigrants settled.   And, if we need anything further besides local government, then the group in a city whose job it would be to get stuff for refugees should be multi-ethnic!  (a few are).

Furthermore, why do these ECBOs even need to be involved in teaching English?  Can’t the state and feds contract a local college to teach English to all immigrants and at least those tax dollars could be monitored.

Center for Prevention of Hate Violence got a grant

Before I get to the list, there is one listed in 2009 that caught my eye—-The Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence in Maine won a grant for $184,719, but is now defunct.

I wrote about them here in 2010 when they were going to take their Lewiston model of how great the Somalis had been assimilated there (they haven’t been) on the road and make some cities feel guilty—three of the cities were refugee over-loaded cities that we write about here all the time, the fourth was Frederick, MD!  Frederick, MD!  They were going to do a PR campaign about the hateful people in Frederick, MD!   Of course, if you live in Maryland you know why—they wanted to discredit Sheriff Chuck Jenkins.  As far as I know it didn’t happen and I’ve wondered if a call made by then Congressman Roscoe Bartlett’s Office to the Maine office of the Center had anything to do with it not happening?

Here is that gold-mine of information, the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress that has just been released four years late on the funding for ECBOs (p.49).   Let’s save the taxpayer $5 million!

Ethnic Community Self-Help Program In FY 2009

MAWA (Minnesota African Women’s Association)

ORR supported 32 single and multi-site ethnic community integration projects through competitive awards totaling $5,028,696. The host organizations provided self-help networks, and various in-house and referral services to enhance refugee integration. In addition, they conducted community outreach, coalition building, self-assessment, strategic planning, resource development, and leadership training activities. The active grantee organizations for FY 2009 are listed below.

The Southern Sudanese American Association, $100,000, AK
•
Boat People, SOS, Inc., $100,000, AL
•
Somali Bantu Association of Tucson, $197,688, AZ
•
Horn of Africa Community in North America, $135,000, CA
•
California Health Collaborative, $141,682, CA
•
Lao Family Community Development Inc., $198,154, CA
•
Merced Lao Family Community Inc., $183,381, CA
•
Merced Lao Family Community Inc., $180,891, CA
•
Colorado African Organization, $197,308, CO
•
ISED Solutions, $121,764, DC
•
Refugee Family Services, $154,430, GA
•
Pan African Association, $177,555, IL
•
Catholic Charities of Louisville, $196,267, KY
•
State of Maine Dept. of Health and Human Services, $168,059, ME
•
Center for Prevention of Hate Violence, $184,719, ME
•
Minnesota African Women’s Association, Inc., $123,758, MN
•
Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment, $168,370, MN
•
Karen Community of Minnesota, $169,000, MN

Montagnard Human Rights Organization, $181,390, NC
•
Asian Community & Cultural Center, $125,000, NE
•
Southern New Hampshire Services, $118,420, NH
•
The International Rescue Committee, $199,962, NY
•
Sauti Yetu Center for African Women, Inc., $
107,590, NY
•
Sauti Yetu Center for African Women, Inc., $152,056, NY
•
Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, Inc., $79,226, NY
•
US Together, Inc., $141,572, OH
•
IRCO-Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization, $200,000, OR
•
Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, $195,608, TN
•
Somali Bantu Association of San Antonio, $174,345, TX
•
Somali Bantu Community of Greater Houston, $125, 695, TX
•
Association of Africans Living in Vermont, $165,531, VT
•
Pan African Community Association, $166,824, WI

We have a whole category on ECBOs, here.   By the way, if you have one or more of these groups in your city or state, please look into their activities and their finances.  They should all be filing Form 990s and reporting how much of their funds come from the government (you!).

Suggestions for cutting US budget: Start with grants to non-profits for healthy marriage education

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

All of last week, we heard the dire warnings from Washington about sequestration.  If we cut a few billion from our trillions of dollars of government funded programs and projects, the planes won’t fly, children will starve and trashcans will overflow in our National Parks.  Yet here is an example of what we are spending our money on—-teaching refugees to have healthy marriages!

I could see some rationale for giving federal dollars to city or county mental health departments overloaded with refugees and asylees to deal with these issues where there might be some taxpayer oversight and review of how the grant money was used, but to give millions to non-profits for this purpose is sheer madness!

This is from that goldmine of information, the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress (p. 50).  Granted it reports on 2009 and earlier years, but it’s really all we have since the ORR is breaking the law by not having already completed reports for years 2010, 2011, and 2012.   No one in Congress seems to care that they are flouting the law.

Who knew all those Laotians, Vietnamese and Cambodians had such rotten marriages!

From the annual report:

Refugee Healthy Marriage Program

In FY 2009, ORR continued its commitment to promoting policies and programs that help strengthen the strong, positive family relationships that refugees have brought with them to the United States. The Refugee Healthy Marriage Program (RHMP) helps provide opportunities for refugees to strengthen their marriages by providing marriage education.

It is believed that refugee couples face unique difficulties because of their flight from persecution and long periods of insecurity. ORR funds marriage education in order to help refugees cope with these difficulties. This group of grantees provides marriage education workshops to refugee couples in order to enhance and promote healthy relationships by providing the skills, tools, knowledge and support necessary to create and sustain healthy marriages. Since the inception ofthe program in FY 2006, 44,476 refugees have attended family courses or workshops.

In FY 2009, ORR funded the following grants:

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $830,000, NY

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $400,000, NY

~United States Committee for Refugees & Immigrants, $780,000, VA

~Jewish Family & Career Services, $309,930, GA

~Lao Family Community Development,$250,000, CA

~Boat People SOS, $250,000, VA

~The Cambodian Family, $250,000, CA

~Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, $250,000, TX

~Jewish Child & Family Services, $247,785, IL

~Catholic Charities of Hartford, $250,000, CT

Obviously the big kahuna in the marriage-fixing business is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (one of the top nine federal refugee contractors).  They get paid by you to bring in refugees, then paid to fix their marriages!

Here are the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s affiliates teaching “healthy marriage” courses.    I had to laugh when I saw that Mohamud Mohamed of JFS (Jewish Family Services) of Western MA is teaching healthy marriages.  I sure hope he has a lesson or two on polygamy in refugee communities, that we don’t beat wives in America, and that honor killing one’s daughters will get you prison time.

Hopefully, this will be first in a series of suggested federal budget cuts from RRW!

Reminder!  Find me on twitter (I just started) @RefugeeWatcher!

Unemployment rate for legal refugees through the roof; contractors should oppose amnesty for illegals

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, they won’t of course.  Most of the federal refugee contractors are out stumping for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform”* which will only mean more destitute immigrants competing with refugees and Americans for jobs.

A NumbersUSA ad circulating this morning (watch it!) in opposition to Lindsey Graham and the ‘gang of eight amnesty plan’ prompted me to look at the shocking unemployment rates for LEGAL immigrant labor—refugees—in the newest stats we have from the FY 2009 Annual Report to Congress on Refugees which I mentioned here and here (food stamp use skyrocketing) yesterday.

The unemployment rate for all refugees (who wish to work and are able to work, some are too old or too sick) for FY 2009 was 50% for those arriving that year!  If you argue that things have improved since 2009, then where are the statistics?   By not producing the legally required reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012, the ORR forces us to rely on the latest statistics available.  By the way, our total number of ‘refugees’ (of all sorts) admitted in FY 2009 was 89,500.  And, we are now proposing to legalize 11 million competitors for jobs?

Shocking graphs

Look at the graph on page 95 for example.  In 2004, 60% of refugees worked an average of 44 weeks.  By 2009, only 32% of refugees were working for (get this!) an average of 14 weeks.    What this says to me is that the resettlement contractors were finding refugees any work they could get, even if it lasted only 14 weeks or less, in order to get their employment stats up.

So, tell me why do we need more immigrant labor when these poor LEGAL immigrants aren’t working?

Next time you see your Catholic priest ask him why the Catholic Church is pushing legalization of illegal immigrants while getting paid to resettle tens of thousands of refugees who will find no work and go on welfare.

* Not “comprehensive” reform anyway because it doesn’t consider the Refugee Resettlement Program.